When deciding to give your company an online presence, don’t make the mistake of acquiring only a single domain name.
Purchasing only one single domain name can, over time, prove costly. Obtain a variety of domain names for your online business and you will never regret that decision.
Here are the key benefits for having more than one domain name for your business:
1. Expansion: Should your business go global and branch into international markets then it is important to have country specific domains, eg, .au, co.nz, or co.uk. Country specific domains readily inform your audience of your presence in those countries where the domain name resides.
2. Misspellings: It is important that users can find your site. If your business name can be spelled in different ways or is susceptible to misspelling, then it is good business decision to register misspelled domain names. Allowing for misspellings or variants of the name will mean you can direct users who misspell your business name to the right destination instead of sending visitors to an error page or worst to a competition.
3. Competition: Acquiring more than one domain name for your business can protect you from parasitic competitors from registering a similar domain name and thus grabbing a share of your market.
4. Search: A website which has many associated domain names is easier to find. Customers have different ways of finding a website in the internet. Give customers as many options as you can to find you by using different domain names.
5. Brand: Protecting your brand and online identity is essential for any online business. Securing a variety of names will inevitably boost your brand presence.
6. Traffic: Purchasing keyword rich domains is a traffic-generator strategy. The traffic attracted by these search engine discoverable domains can be directed to your main domain.
Emanila.com Pty Ltd, an Australian company, is an example of an internet company that uses various domain names.
In addition to emanila brand series like emanilapoetry.com, emanilaclassifieds.com, emanilavideos.com, etc., the following domain names are associated with emanila: emanila.com, emanila.net, emanila.org, emanila.info, emanila.asia, emanila.biz, emanila.mobi, emanila.tv, emanila.ws, emanila.us, e-manila.com, e-manila.biz, e-manila.info, e-manila.net, e-manila.org, and emanila.com.au.
With these domain names, emanila has been able to establish a dominant presence in its own market and has been able to protect its brand by registering for itself variations of its own domain name.
Home networks are becoming more complex and dynamic as emerging technologies enable multiple services to be delivered to multiple users and devices in the home, according to a new report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The report, Developments in Home Networks, looks at trends in technology and product developments over the past year for homeowners, service providers and those delivering communications and media services to the home.
“These new dynamics present both opportunities and challenges for consumers, industry and regulators,” said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman.
Home networks are evolving from simple dedicated services delivered by a single provider to a more complex shared network that can be integrated and customised to deliver a range of services from multiple providers.
Emerging IP-based services such as health monitoring, security, home automation, entertainment and social networking accessible via home networks will reshape the user experience.
For example, a home network could be configured to have all devices store digital media content to a centralised server that could be conveniently accessed by any device within the home, or remotely via the internet.
The home network of the future will require more configuration and ongoing support and will also require more co-ordination between the consumer and service providers.
The customer is increasingly responsible for the home network infrastructure with more emphasis on the service provider to cater for the end-to-end service requirements including some home network equipment.
This is an area where information and skills may be needed to allow consumers to achieve a reliable and secure home networking experience.
The report provides an interesting snapshot of the converging services and of some of the associated challenges for customers grappling with networking basics.
Source: Australian Communications and Media Authority
Australia’s annual population growth rate slowed to 1.7% in the year ending June 2010, according to preliminary figures released recently by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is down from its peak growth rate of 2.2% in the year ending June 2009 and is the lowest since the year ending March 2007.
Western Australia continued to record the fastest population growth rate at 2.2%, followed by Queensland (2.0%), Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (both 1.8%), New South Wales and the Northern Territory (both 1.5%), South Australia (1.2%) and Tasmania (0.9%).
Australia’s population reached 22,342,000 by the end of June 2010, growing by 377,100 people over the year. Net overseas migration accounted for 57% of this growth, with the remaining 43% due to natural increase (births minus deaths).
Net overseas migration continued to decline to the end of June 2010. The preliminary net overseas migration estimate for the June quarter 2010 (32,300 people) was 44.3% lower than the June quarter 2009 (58,100 people).
Based on preliminary figures, there were 302,200 births registered in the year ending June 2010, 1.7% more than the previous year. The number of deaths registered over the same period was 140,600, 2.2% fewer than the previous year.
Australia’s median age (the age at which half the population is older and half is younger) increased by 4.8 years over the past 20 years, from 32.1 years at 30 June 1990 to 36.9 years in 2010. Of all the states and territories, Tasmania recorded the highest median age (39.9 years) and the Northern Territory the lowest (31.3 years) at 30 June 2010.
During the same period, the proportion of children aged 0-14 years decreased by 3.1 percentage points. The proportion of people aged 15-64 years increased by 0.7 percentage points and the proportion of people aged 65 years and over by 2.4 percentage points.
Sometime last year, we saw those letters from “Domain Name Group” (domainnamegroup.com.au) inviting us to register the .net.au version of our domain names at A$245 for two years.
We did not even bother to give those invitation letters a second look as (a) the prices quoted are way out of this world (5 times higher than what others are charging), (b) we did not find the need to register the .net.au version of our domains, and (c) we are no great fan of the “free iPod shuffle” which according to the invitation comes with the two year registration.
Now after almost two years, we are still receiving those letters in our mailbox. Quickly checking what others think about these invitation letters, Google spilled out hundreds of thousands of pages on our search keyphrase “domainnamegroup.com.au.”
Their verdict? The operation of “Domain Name Group” is a scam.
Here are some comments written about this scam:
The letter is made to look very much like an invoice with a tear off tab below for easy payment and all.
It has your company name up the top as if you are a client of theirs and also a reference number too so you think you are on their books.
They make it sound as if you need to register this domain name which is, for instance a .net.au variation of your existing domain (.com.au). The price is $245 for 2 years!!! A real bargain. Source:
I take pity on the general public. How would the average Joe Blow realise that this letter is not what it first looks like? The more I look the more obvious it is; but in an office environment I’m certain a quick glance and processing by a non-technical person will pay out most times. Source:
This group is sending out invoices for payment of domain registration for a .net.au version of their .com.au domains. The invoice appears as a renewal invoice for the original domain name, and is misleading customers with a call to action to pay for the domain registration by offering an iPod if paid by a particular date.
This group harvested postal address information belonging to ACN/ABN owners of the .com.au domain equivalents. The way the group acquired the addresses was simply by searching public Whois database for .au domains, and then used the ACN/ABN details to search for the postal address details via other available online resources. Source:
Our advice: If you receive this type of invitation letter from Domain Name Group, chuck it in the bin.
